


To Think it, Wish it, Even Want it

by Kahvi



Category: British Actor RPF, Sherlock (TV) RPF
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Body Image, Eating Disorders, Food Issues, Gen, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 12:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The difficulty of maintaining a healthy body image when your body is constantly critiqued and on display - OR - How to eat cake. Trigger warnings all over the place; a bit self-indulgent. Cumberbatch/Freeman, if you squint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Think it, Wish it, Even Want it

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely a work of fiction, and the characters depicted therein, while based on the public personas of actual, living people, are not intended to imply anything with regards to the real lives of said actual living people. I know nothing of their personal lives, and I do not wish nor care to speculate. I am only a writer, playing with ideas and concept, and I intend nor mean no harm.
> 
> As this particular work contains reference to disordered eating and thinking, I feel it extra important to point out that this is _fiction_ , not speculation. I have simply used a character and situation/idea which I felt could be altered to fit my theme; not the other way around. I don't know Benedict Cumberbatch, but I'm sure he's doing fine. This story is not _really_ about him.

"Did you just ask Sue to hold your cake for you?" Martin sauntered in stage left (as it were - set left, possibly). He was dripping with sarcasm and something extra at the edges of his voice. Spite, probably. Schadenfreude. Something beginning with 's'.

"Couldn't bring it, could I?"

"Why are you always stuffing your face, now? You wouldn't even have a pint, during readings. You were drinking that fucking coconut water shite and running five miles before breakfast. What's wrong; did one of your three hundred girlfriends leave you?"

"I told you; I need to get fat."

Martin paused, coffee half way to his mouth. " _Fat_ " The way he said the word, it might as well be have been 'Welsh' for all the sense it made.

"Yeah. For Parade's End."

"Yeah, you said. Yesterday." Still that look.

"It's no good really, with all the running around we're doing. I'm hardly up a pound." True enough. He could feel it, though, almost sticking to his skin like a film. Every time he looked in the mirror, he could see it. It wasn't there, but he could see it. Under his skin.

"You're not joking, are you?"

"Of course I'm not joking."

"Ben..." Martin began, his voice unusually quiet, but there was Rupert and Mark, just returned and again, they were off. Ben licked the cream off his lips and joined them.

 

He liked cakes, so that bit was easy. Just to indulge in it was near sexual; he would buy them, box and all, from fancy Soho boutiques or the local Tesco, when in a hurry, licking cream off his fingers in the hotel (and yes, wanking with sticky fingers afterwards the first few times because the sheer _indulgence_ was enough to give him the horn) downing hot chocolate and beer and big, fat, juicy steaks - yeah, that all helped, but the cakes; Jesus, the cakes.

He threw up, the first day. He overdid it; all right, he saw that now. He wasn't used to it. He thought he would be; he'd been (had been able) to eat like a pig during Frankenstein; you lost a fucking stone on the floor every night, so you had to keep it up, and the muscles burned away at it, didn't it, so it wasn't like he wasn't used to eating too much. Far from; he'd been so into it he couldn't even lay off for a week or two to trim down. Blessing in disguise that now, of course; he'd have had so much further to go.

But yeah, he threw up. Stomach cramps and all, and the embarrassment of the hotel staff nearly knocking down his door when he wouldn't answer. Still, you got used to it. These things shouldn't be pleasant, be they ever so much fun. And it was fun, wasn't it, to eat as much as he liked? Such fun.

Cakes; yes. Banoffee pie, trifle. Anything with cream and loads of sugar. (Carbs! Must have those.) Chocolate, in a pinch (too easy to overdo it; cream was lighter), or ice cream. Or all of the above. Ben watched TV in his room into the early hours, wondering why he couldn't sleep, and ran to the scales come morning. "Fat bastard," he told the mirror, grinning. The scale hardly bulged, but every little helped.

 

The tricky bit was how to notice, in yourself. You spent so much time changing that it was hard to tell; near impossible, so every beginning waddle, every fold of flab, every addition to his ever-growing set of chins became a point of near-obsession. He kept hoping others would notice, would comment, but they never did, despite his baiting Martin with facial contortions and talk of food, and lunches together packed with chips and fish and sauce, but the jokes were always about something else, Martin's eyes never entirely on Ben's body.

So, Ben had to do the watching. His costumes still fit, but the way the shirts strained (and he'd gotten a verbal flogging for that at the time, sure enough; "they're fitted, you idiot; we can't just get new ones because you've pigged out a bit", but they still fit, even now, with more lard than muscle) and the trousers made it hard to breathe sometimes gave ways to fits of panic. _I could call. I could back out. I could say no; I can't do this; why did I agree - he's a walrus of a man; I have to get there, I have to be like that, disgusting, like a human whale_. Still, you soldier on (hah). Thus far, no buttons had popped.

Mirrors were tricky, too. Martin caught him once or twice, staring, and slagged him off proper for being a right cock of a self-indulgent bastard, and Ben played along, feeling the added pounds around his waist, on his thighs, remembering younger days when he thought that was normal.

In between shoots, he sucked lollies and drank sugary coke, and let Louise tease him about sugar kicks.

"Jolie laide" Una called him in an interview. Ben read it with a lolly sticking out like a sigarette, at a jaunty angle. _Skinny fat_ more like, he told himself, crunching it between his ugly-pretty teeth.

 

"I would lick you," Martin said, as they waited in the shade to shoot the final scene, "but at my age I have to worry about diabetes."

"Yeah, all right." The sugar jokes had been raining, albeit not from that corner. "Good thing we're wrapping; another week and I'd be busting out of the wardrobe.

Martin sighed, and Ben looked at him, oddly.

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"I'm having a cuppa."

"Yeah, all right. I can see that. I meant..." he dragged a hand through his hair, looking around, as though for the snack tray. (It wasn't around; Ben had checked.) "This 'fat' thing. They're not idiots; they hired you knowing what you look like."

"Of course."

"So; you're not fat, are you?"

Nor was his hair naturally dark, nor his voice quite this level of velvety chocolate, normally. So what? "I'm working on it."

"Ben!" Martin's raised voice had the inborn authority of a dad. "You're naturally skinny. All right? Not like me; I was skinny as a lad, then piled 'em on when I didn't realize I couldn't eat like a fucking pig anymore. That's not you; you're meant to look like this. I've seen pictures."

Ben frowned. "Where have you..."

"Never mind." He shook his head. "You've always been like this."

Something of an exaggeration. He'd been skinny, yeah, but in a soft, milky sort of way. Unattractive. Tall and gangly, flabbishly pale. Working out helped; bulking up helped more. Eating only helped as a reprieve; a temporary one. (And a punishment, yes; he didn't deserve what he had, this he knew - ugly-pretty; interesting, not hot. Sexy in that 'I don't know why' sort of way). "Yeah, well..."

"Don't sweat it, all right? That girl you're with..."

"Anna."

"Anna. Yeah. Let her treat you to a good meal now and then, and fuck 'em if they want you to do more. Please. With my regards."

Ben nodded, warming from the words. _But it's not them. It's me._.


End file.
